Reviews
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A Busted Advent Calendar
The Weary World Rejoices has its unadorned moments of grief, punctuated by moments of energetic wit and intelligent levity.
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The Misperceptions of Being a Stranger in a Strange Land
Event Factory is proof that as Renee Gladman has something new to offer, the perspective of invented linguistics encountered as a traveler.
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There Are More Knowzits Than Ever
Coleman’s work is functional and communal; she wields the oral tradition in a way that reflects her poetry ancestry—the blues queen, Koko Taylor, for example, or the fringe Beat genius, Bob Kaufman—but she also shows planed, hewn lines of intellectual…
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A Welcome Invitation
In Francois Emmanuel’s new collection Invitation to a Voyage, the prose is elegant and refined, the subject matter heady yet accessible, and the execution nearly flawless.
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Prepare Yourself Citizens!
In The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson has not only visited a nation curtained from the rest of the world, but has recreated it with compassion and humanity. The result is a relentless examination of what it means to be…
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The Short History of Summer
Innovation is at the heart of these poems, and King’s ability to see through the surface to the deeper and often disconnected intricacies of life make them pleasurable and powerful to read.
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Manifests Both Terror and Dis-Ease
What is a woman’s place in a world full of overwhelmingly masculine ideas and works? Marthe Reed, in her newest book of poetry, Gaze, examines the many intersections between women and modern society as a whole.
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One Hippopotamus and Magpies
Lynne Barrett’s story collection, Magpies, soaks in the muggy atmosphere of South Florida, with her well-told stories of swamplands and housing developments.
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Blizzard Over Bosphorous
A Fire-Proof Box is a porous work, languages overlapped, breathing, an English translation that manages to capture the icy weight of classically “Russian” sensibilities.
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Nowhere Ho!
Shalom Auslander’s first novel, Hope: A Tragedy, reminds us that the world is a horrible, sad place, but luckily it’s damn funny, too.
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A Different American Dream
In Sam Benjamin’s debut memoir, American Gangbang, we follow an aspiring porn director as he finds what he’s looking for–and what he’s not.
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A Sunny Day is a Sufficient Cathedral
The book’s strongest moments are often its quietest, as when the complexity of the speaker’s engagement with himself and the world is repulsed or rerouted by automatic prompts and alienation.